


Leave The Horror Here

by cosidrix



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Amnesia, Conversations, Dialogue Heavy, M/M, Post-Calamity Ganon, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 22:45:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19935754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosidrix/pseuds/cosidrix
Summary: Sidon and Link have a long conversation about growing up during the Calamity, what exactly happened to Hyrule while Link was asleep in the Shrine of Resurrection, and what healing means after what has no doubt been a very traumatic 100 years for everyone.





	Leave The Horror Here

**Author's Note:**

> Breath of The Wild has stolen my heart but left much to be desired in terms of lore, and while I play the game and roam through the ruins of Hyrule, I often find myself wondering what happened to such a massive kingdom. Well, I took matters into my own hands and decided to write it for myself.  
> Warning for some mentioned violence and graphic implications about what happened to the once larger population of Hyrule. Happy ending though, I swear.  
> This was inspired by a post I made on Tumblr delving into BoTW lore that isn't covered in-game. The link for that is at the bottom.  
> Enjoy!

The Zora’s Domain boasted a considerable lack of damage when compared to the rest of Hyrule. After the initial Calamity gained control over the land, there was a sort of… shrinking, one might say. Those who resided along the eastern ridge of Lanayru drew themselves in, like one might with a blanket on a cold night. It was the families who lived farther out that were affected the most. The Zoras who had made a home for themselves far from the capital of the Domain were unfortunately largely lost in the first wave of plunder. Some could not run fast enough, or swim fast enough. The soldiers couldn’t get there in time, or there wasn’t enough soldiers left to come to their aid. It was a devastating blow to the populace. Still, they were better off than many of their neighboring towns.  
  
Prince Sidon had been a child then, of course, much too young to truly grasp at what was going on. Only that suddenly that what they could consider to be the Domain was smaller, and that he couldn’t swim in the reservoir freely like he had, and there were a staggering amount of displaced refugees in the capital. He remembered the crisis in that sort of fractured way that one looks back on their childhood. Strangers crying in the throne room, Muzu urging him into safety, his father’s grieving face. A red sky, and then a black sky, then a red sky again. Red water. That was one of the worst parts.  
  
“I wish I had even that much.” Link said quietly.  
  
They walked along the Lanayru Promenade, just the two of them. Contractors had surveyed the damage and got to work quickly on it’s repair, and as part of Sidon’s royal duty, he oversaw much of the reconstruction. He spent his days going about Lanayru and northern Necluda, expressing his gratitude to those who were helping to restore Hyrule to its former glory. The end of the Calamity saw to the creation of many jobs, and within ten years or less, things should be looking almost like they used to. Sidon dealt with things like reestablishing trade routes and getting the topsoil of northeast Lanayru functional again, but in between tasks, he often sought out his dearest Hylian companion. Link had learned quite a deal about the wilderness of Hyrule, and appreciated getting a chance to enjoy it without the constant threat of violence on the back of his mind, so it wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to accompany Sidon on his outings.  
  
“Ah, you don’t mean that,” Sidon said gravely, “I assure you, the reality was much harsher. My words can never truly do it justice. Besides, the past is the past, right?”  
  
Link shrugged. “I just… I had a part in it. I had a huge part, and it’s just lost now.”  
  
Sidon nodded in greeting to a laborer who was chiseling out cracked stone from one of the pillars along the promenade. The woman smiled at him kindly and resumed her work. Sidon cleared his throat and searched for a way to comfort Link, but came up short before he continued.  
  
“Everyone has this thing, you know? This tragedy that they can bond over, can heal from, and I don’t have shit,” he explained, “I just want to know. I want to understand what you all went through, I want to understand _you._ Zelda, too, but I think she’s mad that I don’t remember much.”  
  
“Why do you think that?”  
  
“It’s Zelda. She could find a reason to be mad at me in her sleep.”  
  
“Come on now. She’s just-- just finicky.”  
  
“Not the word I would use.” Link snorted.  
  
“Oh, I know the word you would use, and… while it may be somewhat true,” Sidon chuckled, “I wouldn’t take what she says or does personally. We all heal in different ways. Zelda’s method is just lashing out, but it will pass. She’s been through untold horrors. We all have.”  
  
“Maybe I’d have an easier time empathizing if she’d talk to me.”  
  
“She will, in time.”  
  
They both paused then, listening to the gentle running of the river to their right side. Sidon leaned over on his elbows against the railing and looked down it’s path, watching the schools of trout swim peacefully along. Absentmindedly, he picked at some moss growing up the side of the stone that had been missed in the initial cleaning process and sighed to himself. Link leaned his back against a nearby column and crossed his arms.  
  
“I want you to tell me. Even the bad parts.”  
  
Sidon was quiet for a long moment, flicking the peeled off moss into the water below. “It’s all bad parts, I’m afraid. Or at least a great lot of it.”  
  
“I’m asking. You can tell me no.”  
  
“I know.”  
  
In his periphery, Sidon watched Link look into the water as well. He was wistful, and it was an emotion that Sidon deeply wanted to rid him of, but they had both been through so much that it wasn’t possible, at least not yet. _In time._  
  
“You’ll have to tell me some of your stories as well, you know. The good ones, if you’ve got any.” He looked over at Link and watched the smallest smile quirk his lips.  
  
“I’ve got a few good ones,” He told him, “Like when I accidentally made camp under a tree with a bee’s nest. I’ll tell you what, you only make that mistake once.”  
  
“That doesn’t sound like a good one.” Sidon cringed.  
  
Link grinned, “It is. In retrospect, at least. I really did learn a lot out there.”  
  
“It appears so, yes.”  
  
“Mm.” Link thought for a moment, “Have you ever been to Lurelin?”  
  
Sidon shook his head.  
  
“Oh, man.” Link detached himself from the pillar and walked over to join Sidon at the railing, speaking dreamily, “It was gorgeous. People had made home right there on the beach, and the food was _delicious._ Seriously, you’ll never have a sweeter palm fruit. Tons of dogs there too, they’ll run along with you in the sand. I stayed a few weekends there. The people were really nice. It’s the south tip of Necluda, we should go sometime.”  
  
“I’m afraid that’s a bit outside of my jurisdiction.”  
  
Link nudged him. “When you’re not on royalty duty, I mean. Just, y’know, free time. Me and you.”  
  
Sidon looked upstream then, willing his face not to flush. “Maybe. That won’t be for awhile, I’ve got my hands very full here.”  
  
“I can wait. Haven’t got any big adventures planned out for once, so.”  
  
“You’re paying a visit to the Gerudo desert, aren’t you?”  
  
“Highlands, but yeah. You couldn’t pay me to make the trek all the way into town again, no way. Riju is meeting me halfway. _That’s_ a part of the story that has no funny parts. Unless you count me in girl’s clothes as funny, which Zelda certainly did.”  
  
Sidon smiled, amused, “I’m sure you were adorable.”  
  
“Oh, Zel’s got pictures, don’t worry.”  
  
“I can’t wait.”  
  
“Who could?” Link laughed a little. “There’s nothing like waking up from a hundred-year nap and being forced to crossdress to, you know, save the world.”  
  
Sidon looked over at him fondly. “I can’t imagine anyone else who would have the courage to do what you’ve done for us all.”  
  
“What, wear a sirwal? Honestly, they’re pretty comfortable.”  
  
“No,” Sidon rolled his eyes. “I’m talking about adventuring on your own, freeing the Divine Beasts, fighting Ganon, all of it.”  
  
Link made a disgusted face. “Oh, not you too.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Do you have any idea how many times I hear that a day?” He groaned, “Like, of course, you’re all welcome, but it was my home too. I didn’t want to see it destroyed any more than the rest of you. People put me up on this pedestal for it and I just-- I just want to be normal. I appreciate their gratitude, it’s not like someone’s going to say thanks and I’m going to tell them to shove it. But I just want to be like everyone else. It makes me feel like an outsider.”  
  
Sidon’s face fell a little. “That’s why you want to know about what it was like so badly.”  
  
Looking back into the water, Link said, “Maybe. Probably. I just feel like… if I understand it, if I can be on the same page as everyone else, then we can all move on together.”  
  
Sidon nodded in silence.  
  
“If I’m being selfish about it, you can tell me.”  
  
“No, you’re not being selfish. I understand that it’s what you need.” He leaned back off the railing. “Come, we should continue our stroll if we want to be home by sunset.”  
  
Link followed him without comment. For a long stretch, the two walked with nothing but the sounds of the river and the workers to accompany them. Sidon passed along pleasantries with particular people that he knew well, and Link lingered off to the side and watched the princely performance with curiosity. When people stopped to thank him, he could never handle the interaction nearly as smooth as Sidon could. Though, he reasoned, Sidon had a lot more time to practice. Link never thought he’d survive, let alone make it far enough to see a reborn Hyrule. He wasn’t diplomatic or even really social in any regard, so while Sidon glided through conversations with those who looked upon him with awe, Link fumbled. It was stressful situations like those that led his voice to fail him, and he often found himself nodding his way out of it.  
  
Once they had passed through most of the laborers, and with the afternoon sun gently warming the otherwise habitually cool Lanayru air, Link and Sidon found themselves a place to sit in the grass. Sidon stretched out in the green and closed his eyes. Link remained upright and cross-legged beside him, perhaps a little envious that Sidon retained a love and trust for the outdoors that Link had unfortunately lost. He wondered if he could ever truly relax again, after everything.  
  
“It’s not a nice story.” Sidon warned him softly after a moment.  
  
“I didn’t expect it to be.”  
  
Sidon sighed, “Right. Well, what do you want to know first?”  
  
Link considered it for a moment. There had been several questions he’d come up with along his journey that he sought to retrieve an answer to if he had he ever been given the chance. However, they deserted him now, all but one. “Hyrule Field. And… and the Great Plateau. What happened there?”  
  
Sidon paused for a moment, jaw working. “They just… unfortunately were so close to the castle. Towns that were tucked away, had natural borders, like Kakariko or Gerudo-- they stood up the best. Hateno used to be larger, but they’re a rather hardy bunch, even now. They fared alright. The ranches, the townspeople, and… those on the Plateau, were all just unfortunately placed.” He chewed his lip, “Easy targets, one might say. There was no standing army. Well, there _was,_ but they were Guardians.”  
  
Link grit his teeth. It was the truth, unbearable as it might be, and he had asked him for it.  
  
“You have my deepest condolences, you know that.”  
  
Link looked over at Sidon’s face and found a true sorrow in his eyes. He nodded in thanks.  
  
“We all lost people. I knew Zoras who…” He paused, “Schoolchildren, little ones, like I was at the age all this happened. Ganon’s beasts were indiscriminate. Muzu and my father sheltered me as best they could, but I wasn’t stupid. There’s a reason that there isn’t a terrible amount of Zoras my age. Little ones who weren’t--” He cleared his throat, “They weren’t, ah, quick swimmers. The day Ganon arrived, I mean… we didn’t know. No one knew. We’d been hypervigilant of the Bokoblins, and the Lynels, and we were cautious but… we weren’t prepared, not really.  
  
“I was taught growing up that you could trust the Guardians. Sure, they had minds of their own and could be a little rowdy, but they weren’t dangerous. When Ganon arrived, people even sought them out, they knew they’d be safe with a Guardian nearby to protect them. Honest mistake, I suppose,” He said sourly, “It’s no one’s fault but his. Ganon’s, I mean. Even now, I see old Guardians, eaten away by time, and my heart aches for them.”  
  
“That makes sense.” Link commented softly. “No one knew any better.”  
  
“It’s all tragic, in so many ways. It was worse than I can explain to you, and to sit on the throne and not be able to protect your people…”  
  
“You were just a kid.”  
  
“True. But so was Zelda.” He paused, “Anyway, I’m not talking about the very beginning, I’m talking about being brought up to be an heir in that kind of world. My father once told me that he hoped he could see the day that the hero would come to Hyrule, but as the years dragged on, he wasn’t sure he would make it. Coming to age in the midst of a losing battle, knowing you would see your kind get slaughtered again and again, certain it would only get worse from then on-- it’s a different kind of hopeless.”  
  
Link said, “I got that a lot, when I was traveling. I had elderly people tell me they couldn’t believe that I had come, that they had lived long enough to see Hyrule be saved. It just makes me wonder how many didn’t.”  
  
“Many.” Sidon said bluntly, but not angrily, just in the way of someone who had long since struggled to unravel a truth that now it seemed to be one of the few things they understood wholly. “But please, don’t think that’s your fault. The death toll evened out after a few years. It came in waves, but once we closed off major trade routes, kept our towns small, and stayed far, far away from the Castle, we were mostly safe.”  
  
In a small voice, Link asked, “How many people died?”  
  
Sidon remained silent for a moment, contemplative. “The Ukuku Plains, Trilby Valley, ah… many of the grasslands in Faron. Parts of Tanagar Canyon. They all had space appropriated to be mass graves, but there wasn’t enough room. Eventually they started tossing them off the cliffs in North Eldin. I heard the Ritos took some to Hebra, but it was… gruesome when summer came around. The snow melted and…”  
  
Link tried to force the tightness in his chest away. “That’s horrible.”  
  
“It was.” Sidon muttered bleakly, “It was the worst thing you could imagine. There got to a point where more people were dying than having children. We wondered if it might really be the end of Hyrule.”  
  
“There are kids now, though. I see them all the time in the Domain.”  
  
“Oh, yes.” For the first time in a long while, Sidon smiled. “I can certainly say that for my people, that we were not going extinct without a fight.”  
  
Link recalled, “I met a mother once, in Faron. She had a toddler, maybe three or four years old. And she asked me if I would come with them to Hylia Bridge, to make sure nothing happened, you know? I was headed that way anyway, so we went on horseback and we got there and hiked up to the top of this hill and… and she sat her daughter on her lap and when Farosh flew into the sky, she pointed at it and told her little girl, _look, that’s Farosh, she’s part of one of the Goddesses that gave us Hyrule, and she loves you._ She just kept telling her that this dragon, this spirit, loved her. It loved her so much and things were going to get better because the hero was here again and that I was going to fix everything and they were someday going to go home. She believed so much, she had this steel conviction that was so rare.  
  
“On the way back, she told me her family used to live in Akkala, and that she hoped their home was still there. She’d never seen it herself, she’d been living in Faron all her life. But her grandmother had lived there and told her all these things about how beautiful it was, and she was excited to see her family’s home someday. She told me her grandmother had taken her mother up to see Farosh, and to show her when she was little that there were still good, beautiful things to believe in, like dragons and goddesses and heroes. Her mother had done the same for her, and she wanted to do the same for her daughter. Then she told me she prayed everyday to Hylia that her daughter would never have to take her child to see Farosh out of necessity, only out of curiosity, and that Hyrule would be saved and her grandchildren would always be safe and faithful.  
  
“And it just broke my heart. I’d been to Akkala, there were no houses. There was nothing but rubble. I knew her family’s house was gone. But she was so full of hope, so honestly believing in a better future for her children. She’d been born in the middle of the Calamity, she’d never seen a peaceful Hyrule, but she believed that things could still be good. That kind of spirit is so hard to find.”  
  
“Did you tell her there were no houses there?”  
  
“No, of course I didn’t. Frankly, I didn’t even believe I would be enough to save Hyrule, so I thought she’d never know and we’d be square. I guess I’m kind of an ass now, huh? She’s gotta have been up there by now and seen it for herself.” Link chuckled in a rather fragile sort of way.  
  
Sidon gazed at him. “You’re not an ass.”  
  
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that… people could have laid down and taken it, they could have let this be the end of Hyrule. But they didn’t, they fought for future generations. This woman’s grandmother never saw the end of the Calamity, she died years before I woke up. But even she believed. There was a whole family who believed in good, which they had never seen, and a home, which they had never been to. And after that, I couldn’t help but wonder how many family lines had been cut off, relocated. How many people all across Hyrule were waiting to go back to the places they only knew about from their grandparents’ stories. That’s what kept me going. When I was frozen, half dead in the Hebra tundras, I knew I was fighting for those people. When my skin was getting burnt to a crisp in Eldin, it was for them. Everyday was for these people. If anything, they’re the real heroes. I was just a guy who woke up and started killing stuff.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know if I was going to make it out alive, I just knew I had to do what I could. The people of Hyrule… they’re something else.”  
  
“You know,” Sidon commented carefully, “you might understand Zelda better than you think.”  
  
Link looked at him confused. “What do you mean?”  
  
“Zelda stayed in the Castle for well over a hundred years, fighting, waiting for you. She didn’t know if she was going to make it out either. But she kept going. You have that common ground with her, I’d hold onto it.”  
  
Link nodded solemnly. “Yeah, you’re right. She just seems so far away. I don’t think it’ll ever be the same between us ever again.”  
  
“Do you remember what it was like with her before?”  
  
“A little. I get flashes of memories, little bits of familiarity. But it’s foggy. Barely there.”  
  
“I can’t imagine how difficult that must be.”  
  
He chuckled without humor, “Yeah, it’s pretty bad. I just know when I look at her, it stings. Even when I’m talking to her, which, you know, isn’t often. It’s nostalgic, and it stings, and I don’t want her to hurt as bad as she is. Even if I can’t remember, it’s… I don’t know.”  
  
“Even if you can’t remember, there’s still love there.” Sidon offered gently.  
  
“Yeah,” Link stopped and cleared his throat, “Yeah. There is. I mean, we’re like soulmates. She’s like a sister to me.”  
  
Sidon thought for a moment. “Hm. There’s an old Zora proverb, I can’t quite recall the wording of it now, but it’s something about twin spirits swimming as one. No matter how far apart they may be, they’re in the same sea together, and that alone will always bind them. You two are just near different coasts right now, but you’re still in the water.”  
  
Link lifted his chin and looked off to the left. The memories he had of Hyrule Castle being shrouded in malice far outweighed the ones he had from before, but to see it slowly inch it’s way towards restoration drew up a similar nostalgia as the one he felt towards his relationship with Zelda. There were parts of Hyrule that were beyond beautiful, beyond words, beyond comprehension. He felt such a thing for the first time when he reached the top of Satori Mountain and saw the spirit emerge there. When you looked upon Hyrule, you couldn’t help but feel an _I love you._ You couldn’t help but feel an _I will protect you, and if it costs me my life, then that’s simply what it costs._ You couldn’t help but feel an _I’m so lucky to be alive and to see you alive here as well._ It was something Link learned to feel after being Zelda's knight for so long. In the distance, the strong spires and towers soared into the open air, a promise of unwavering strength that would outlive every last one of the land’s residents. The sight of the Castle, whose perseverance mirrored its royal subjects’, invoked that loving feeling within Link. Zelda was in there somewhere. Zelda was in this ocean somewhere. He found her once, he would do it again.  
  
“You know, I may not have been entirely truthful. I do believe there were some good parts,” Sidon continued, “The first day we resumed classes for the children, the first day we opened the shops up again, the first letters from faraway towns that had good news for a change." Sidon lingered there on those memories, and they warmed him still. Those signs of life in Hyrule, taking the pulse of the land and finding it grow stronger everyday. An unexpected recovery from an unexpectedly resilient people. "Once we figured out how to return to our normal ways of life, things did get easier. Finding safe places to farm again, or to fish. There were good days.”  
  
Link looked back to Sidon. “Yeah, there were good days for me too. Like, I honestly never minded being alone. The quiet was nice. But finding travelers after a week or so spent out in the wilderness, that was always a treat. Oh man, and bathing for the first time in awhile after only having lakes and weird soap that gave me rashes half the time? That was _so good.”_  
  
“Yes, I can imagine--”  
  
“And brushing my hair!” Link laughed, “You don’t realize how much you miss brushing your hair until you haven’t in days.”  
  
“That I _can’t_ imagine actually,” Sidon grinned, “Sea-dwelling and all.”  
  
“Oh, yeah. That makes sense. You’ll just have to take my word for it then.”  
  
“It seems more like a nuisance than anything.”  
  
Link made a face as he thought about it. “Huh. Yeah, I get why you’d think that.”  
  
“Having something attached to you indefinitely that you can’t feel just seems… uncomfortable.”  
  
“Oh, no, you can feel it. Well, you can feel your scalp. That’s why brushing your hair feels so good.”  
  
“Hm.” Sidon considered that, and if he briefly thought about brushing Link’s hair for him, then he would just have to take it to the grave. “I like your hair. Have you always worn it long?”  
  
Link nodded, “It was the style back before I went to sleep in the shrine. And I like it, but it probably would’ve been smarter to cut it while I was out exploring.”  
  
“Well, I’m happy you didn’t.”  
  
Link grinned and raised an eyebrow, “You like it that much, huh?”  
  
Sidon exaggeratedly rolled his eyes and smiled, “Oh, be quiet, would you?”  
  
“You know I’m just teasing.” Link unfolded his legs and leaned back onto his elbows beside Sidon. The grasses of Lanayru were always so thick and inviting. “But yeah, I can’t imaging having it shorter. It’s longer than Zel’s now, which is pretty funny.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“Mhm, she chopped it all off a little while ago. It looks good on her. One of the things I do remember from before was that she always hated her hair but her father never let her cut it.”  
  
“Well, at the very least, I’m glad she can now,” Sidon said, “All things considered.”  
  
Link made a noise in agreement, and then paused. “The king gave her a hard time about a lot. She’s starting to grow into herself some more now. It’s nice to see.”  
  
“I believe you both are.” Sidon commented, then continued when Link gave him an inquisitive look, “You were very different when you first came to the Domain. You were headstrong, but very quiet.”  
  
“Which is so strange,” Link said sarcastically, “Most of the guys I know with mutism are always so chatty.”  
  
“Do you wake up in the morning and think, _I wonder how I’m going to irritate Sidon today?”_  
  
“Well, most days. Sometimes I think about how I’m going to irritate Muzu, but that one doesn’t take as much creativity,” Link told him, and then flashed a smile that Sidon thought would surely kill him.  
  
“Anyway,” He said, looking away for his own good, “You were quiet in a different way. You were troubled. I understand why, but it’s nice to see all that lifted off your shoulders. You’re happier.”  
  
“Yeah, it’s tough to be in a great mood when you’re probably the most stressed out person in all of Hyrule.”  
  
“So dramatic. It’s not like you had the fate of all existence in the palm of your hand or anything.”  
  
“Right? How dare I.” Link, against his better judgement, lowered himself the rest of the way onto the ground and let his eyes fall closed. He was pretty sure nothing was going to attack him with a Zora three times his size there to protect him. He sighed, but not unhappily, “Sometimes I kinda miss sleeping like this. Don’t get me wrong, having a bedroom is definitely better, but it wasn’t so bad. The grass was soft, sometimes I’d wake up with a couple Koroks nearby who had found me. I could just lay there and watch the sunrise.”  
  
“Maybe sometime we could go camping together.”  
  
“Mm,” Link hummed, “I think I’d like that.”  
  
Sidon hesitated briefly before saying, “I want to understand _you_ as well.”  
  
“Huh?”  
  
“You-- you mentioned, earlier, back on the Promenade, how you wanted to understand me. I feel the same towards you. I don’t think I can do that without being with you closer to your element,” Sidon reasoned, “It’s unfortunate, how these distinctly terrible times of our lives have really made us who we are. And it’s unfortunate that to reach a real understanding, we have to bear both the good and bad parts of what happened to one another.”  
  
Link was quiet for a long moment, a moment that felt strangling to Sidon. However, he told him, “Yeah, you’re right. And I guess we’ve got a lot in common, y’know, with me not… remembering a lot before it all and you being such a little kid when it all happened.”  
  
“I suppose so. I’ve never thought of that,” Sidon conceded, “If you don’t mind my forthrightness, how much _do_ you remember, Link?”  
  
Jaw working, Link considered this. His memories had decayed, there was no way of ignoring that and even the strongest magic in Hyrule didn’t stand a chance at bringing them back. The Shrine of Resurrection did what was asked of it, and spent those hundred years deftly pulling Link’s body back from death, but it didn’t concern itself with the matters of his mind. It rebuilt and recollected and restored. That was its job.  
  
Thus, his mind atrophied, and indiscriminately did those memories atrophy away with it. Time stole away important ones just as much as the minor ones. He could have broken teeth with how hard he was clenching his jaw once, alone in one of Hyrule’s dozens of forests so long ago, trying in vain to remember his mother’s name. Or his childhood home. Or nearly anything at all.  
  
Recalling was like reaching into the murky deep, watching it swallow your hand whole and hoping you didn’t pull back with a stump, lest the feeling of having no past and a future that could so easily slip away sink its teeth into your wrist again.  
  
Link swallowed. “I remember things like praying at the Temple of Time with my father for the first time. I don’t remember hearing Hylia’s voice then, but I might have been too young. I don’t remember hearing Hylia’s voice for the first time at all but I know it had to have happened. It feels like… for every memory I do have, it just makes me realize how little I actually remember. So I don’t talk about it a lot.”  
  
“Does it hurt to?”  
  
Frostbite on his fingers when he was looking for Naydra hurt. The dehydrated soreness of his throat when he knelt over the Great Fairy Fountain in the Gerudo Desert and drank the water with his hands hurt. The electric shock and deafening hiss of Guardian lasers hurt. Seeing the ghosts of the Champions and feeling more sorry than he could ever explain hurt. Waking up every morning with old aches and new sorrows hurt. Link knew what it felt like to hurt.  
  
“No, it doesn’t,” He said in a voice so gentle, “It just makes me tired. It makes me thankful that I lived long enough to make more memories. But it makes me tired.”  
  
“You’ve had a long life.”  
  
“Pfft. That’s a lot coming from a Zora. You guys live way longer than Hylians.”  
  
“True. And I’m still in the beginning of my life, though it doesn’t feel like that.”  
  
Link looked over at him, pressing his cheek to the grass. Sidon turned to gaze back. “Yeah, I feel the same way.”  
  
There was a long silence before Sidon said, “I could wish anything for you, it was that it gets easier. You deserve to rest. We all do, I think. But especially you and Zelda.”  
  
Link nodded, hard as the admittance may be.  
  
“You have time, memories may come back to you. If they don’t, then you can make more, like you said. It will get easier. I’m dedicated to doing everything I can to aid with that. You’re our hero, but you’re not alone in that. Not anymore.”  
  
Today, there were more people in Hyrule that remembered only the Calamity than there were those who remembered the glory of it in the past. But someday, there would be no one who ever saw the Calamity firsthand, and the history would be scattered to the wind. The horrors and happiness and everything in between would be kept in songs for musicians like Kass, and the bodies buried deep down would decompose and become new flowers and trees for Koroks to hide in, and when Ganon came back, they would not lose again. When Zelda came back, they would not lose. When Link came back, as he knew he would and when that thought twisted his stomach into knots, he remembered that he had the rest of this life to live before facing it again… they would not lose.  
Hyrule had adapted, adjusted, aged along even in the face of a very possible extinction. It’s people were resilient. Link knew that much. He had trust in them because there was simply no other option. They had housed him and clothed him and fed him and trusted in _him,_ even when he couldn’t bring himself to feel the same.  
  
_“Whether skyward bound, adrift in time, or steeped in the glowing embers of twilight,”_ Zelda had told him once, so scared and so very long ago, _“The sacred blade is forever bound to the soul of the hero.”_  
  
It was time to rest.

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the post, as promised, if you want to hear some of the thoughts I had that weren't explored in this. https://persona4.tumblr.com/post/186485221673/do-u-think-link-even-wanted-to-explore-did-he
> 
> BoTW is a gift of a game, truly, it inspires me every time I indulge in playing it. Comment and let me know if you want more of this... strange and introspective and reading-way-too-much-into-things content, because it's absolutely what I do best. I love this universe a lot (and hope you do too) and if nothing else, I hope this has given you a new lens through which to view the people of Hyrule. 
> 
> Oh, and if BoTW2 isn't a sequel and Zelda /doesn't/ come back with cool short hair and tons of trauma, this won't age very well. If it does, I'm a genius, and you can honor my psychic abilities by messaging me for my PayPal.


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